A lot of roster happenings on June 29.
We’re mere hours from free agency beginning in earnest — at 6 PM EDT on June 30 can teams talk to free agents not on their own team — but a lot transpired the previous day with regards to Atlanta’s roster.
Today was the deadline for all projected restricted free agents to be extended a qualifying offer, including players concluding their rookie contracts and players eligible for two-way contracts coming off a two-way contract. In addition, most team and player options have today as a cutoff date for their respective decisions. And Atlanta has a lot of players from the 2023-24 season who fall into these buckets.
We’ll start with Garrison Mathews, who had his salary for 2024-25 guaranteed by virtue of an activated team option worth around $2.2 million per Michael Scotto of HoopsHype.
The Atlanta Hawks will exercise the team’s $2.23 million option on Garrison Mathews, league sources told @hoopshype. Mathews shot a career-high 44% from 3-point range in a career-high 66 games for Atlanta last season. This paves the way for a potential extension down the line. pic.twitter.com/7z9AYIHPiY
— Michael Scotto (@MikeAScotto) June 29, 2024
As Scotto notes, Mathews is coming off a season where he played in a career-high 66 games and hit a career-high 44% of his shots from three (good for fourth-best percentage in the NBA) — important since he took 85% of his field goals from long range. He will become extension eligible once the new fiscal season begins on July 6.
2020 NBA Draft 19th overall pick Saddiq Bey, however, was close to reaching the end of his rookie scale contract — allowing him to cash in a big contract in restricted free agency — before suffering a torn ACL in early March of this year. That and a prolonged shooting slump (32% from three in 2023-24) were some of the probable reasons the Hawks reportedly decided against tendering Bey an $8.5 million qualifying offer.
The Hawks can still re-sign Bey, but he is now an unrestricted free agent and the Hawks lose the right of first refusal from any offer sheet he signs with the 29 other teams. Since he’ll be spending most, if not all, of the upcoming season rehabbing from his injury, it may be preferable for him to ink a one-year ‘prove it’ deal.
Vit Krejci and Seth Lundy were both handed two-way qualifying offers per Lauren Williams of the AJC and Michael Scotto, respectively.
Per league source, the Hawks have extended a two-way qualifying offer to Vit Krejci.
— Lauren L. Williams (@WilliamsLaurenL) June 29, 2024
The Atlanta Hawks have tendered a two-way qualifying offer to Seth Lundy, league sources told @hoopshype. Lundy averaged 20.4 points and shot 40 percent from 3-point range in 25 regular-season and Showcase games for Atlanta’s G League team, the College Park Skyhawks, last season. pic.twitter.com/zHAdO7Ebnz
— Michael Scotto (@MikeAScotto) June 28, 2024
Krejci is expected to decline his offer and seek a multi-year guaranteed contract, while Lundy is thought to likely sign his and return on a two-way contract for next season.
Lastly, Bruno Fernando has an approximately $2.7 million unguaranteed salary for next season. The decision date was also today, but he and the organization bilaterally agreed to push the date back into sometime in July per Lauren Williams.
The Hawks have extended the deadline to next month to decide on Bruno Fernando’s guarantee, per league source. No specific date yet but they extended him last year, as well, to July 10.
— Lauren L. Williams (@WilliamsLaurenL) June 30, 2024